LVTFan's Blog

Be a good ancestor

This post goes back a couple of weeks, but I thought it worth sharing.  I've been half-listening to some graduation speeches on C-SPAN, and that parting line from one of them jumped out at me.  What does it mean to be a good ancestor?

David Cay Johnston doesn't get it -- yet

David Cay Johnston is a good journalist and a good writer, and I think he has both a good mind and a fine intellect, and a love for his fellow human beings.  He is well read, a good researcher, and shares what he finds with  his readers.  But I have come to think that he has, at minimum, a blind spot.  (I'd hate to think that it was blinders producing what I'll describe below.)

Orthodox Anglicans hint schism, stop short of split

article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080620/ts_nm/anglican_conference_dc_2 begins

PARIS (Reuters) - Conservative bishops debating the future of the worldwide Anglican Communion have issued dramatic warnings about a looming parting of the ways with liberal churches, but stopped short of outlining steps toward a schism.

A bit of websearching took me to the booklet mentioned in the final paragraph:

The 94-page guidebook entitled "The Way, The Truth and The Life" defined the issues Anglicanism faces as struggles over authority, scripture, theological pluralism, mission work and "post-colonial power relationships."

Link: gafcon_way_truth_life.pdf (application/pdf Object).

It runs to 102 pages.  A search on the word poverty finds its only two appearances on page 56.  Here's what it has to say on the subject:

CA & FL account for nearly 1/3 of mortgages in foreclosure or 90 days delinquent

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/business/06mortgage.html:  About 1 in 11 Mortgageholders Face Loan Problems

a few excerpts:

• About 1 in 11 American mortgages were past due or in foreclosure at the end of March, according to a report released on Thursday, a figure that is rising fast as home prices fall and the job market weakens.
• California and Florida, for instance, accounted for nearly a third of all mortgages that were in foreclosure or 90 days delinquent. Home prices, construction and mortgage lending were particularly ebullient in those states earlier this decade. The housing industry accounted for a bigger portion of their economies during the boom.
• “The problems in California and Florida are extraordinary, and they are the main drivers of the national trend,” said Jay Brinkmann, vice president for research and economics at the Mortgage Bankers Association.
• In states like California and Florida where they have huge inventories of repossessed homes, some companies are starting to move a little faster by auctioning off properties...

What do California and Florida have in common?

Thoughts for Barack Obama

A friend sent me a link to a page where one can make policy suggestions to Barack Obama's campaign.  Turns out to be a thinly veiled way to harvest emails.  But maybe somewhere in the campaign, someone might actually read the suggestions.

One of the fields was a dropdown menu so one could categorize one's proposal.  I chose "economy" but made the first line of my policy proposal a list of a number of categories into which mine falls:

Issues: Economy, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Family, Infrastructure, Justice, Labor, Poverty ... and maybe even health --  

Halving US Poverty in 10 Years

A Washington think tank, the Center for American Progress, has published a strategy for halving US poverty in 10 years.  While I applaud their goal, I find it too timid and think their strategies wrong-headed.  Their analysis fails to consider why we have poverty in the first place, and proceeds to design bandaids.  If we are going to eradicate poverty, we must go to the root of the problem, and in my judgment, CfAP has not  pursued the problem to its root and thus cannot do more than attempt to trim its branches.  Pruning poverty's branches is not going to rid us of poverty.  It may move some people we acknowledge as "in poverty" to "out of poverty" as we officially define it, and perhaps they can achieve half their goal, declare victory, and call the rest of the problem intractible.

But living just above the poverty line is little better than or different from living somewhat below it, and we're kidding ourselves if we accept the poverty line as a meaningful statistic.    See this page and this page and the related pages linked there.

HG quote for today

There is danger in reckless change; but greater danger in blind conservatism. The problems beginning to confront us are grave -- so grave that there is fear they may not be solved in time to prevent great catastrophes. But their gravity comes from indisposition to recognize frankly and grapple boldly with them.

Democracy and Opportunity: A New Paradigm in Tax Equity

Link: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/06/repetti-democra.html#more

I came across an abstract for an article which I suspect, on 3rd reading, is a comparison of the FairTax with the current income tax with respect to opportunity in America. 

I was excited by a couple of statements -- 

This article proposes that the principal equity goal underlying a just government is the creation of equal opportunities for all citizens to achieve self realization, i.e. to maximize their potential. It proposes, therefore, that a tax should be designed to achieve equal opportunity for self realization as one of its principal goals. Viewing equal opportunity for self realization as a design issue leads to the identification of another principle that is foundational - the promotion of democracy.

And disappointed by what I think is its favoring of the income tax.   Yes, the income tax is vastly superior to the Boortz FairTax, which, I realized on my 3rd or 4th reading of the abstract, was only alternative under consideration.

Luke Russert's tribute to his father: a new political party?

link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/18/AR2008061801173.html
These paragraphs caught my eye ...

Luke Russert said that whenever he did well on a school assignment, his father would yell, "Yahoo! You smoked 'em, buddy!"

He asked the crowd to imagine a special edition of "Meet the Press" this Sunday in heaven, perhaps with a debate between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, or John F. Kennedy and Barry Goldwater. He even suggested a talk on the need for a new political party involving Teddy Roosevelt, the former president who later ran unsuccessfully for president as a member of the Bull Moose party.

What was the platform of that party?  You might be surprised, both by its timeliness and by its similarity to the ideas of Henry George, who came in #2 in the 1886 NYC mayoral election in which TR was #3. (Tammany Hall won, and the circumstances would not surprise most people troubled by some of our recent national elections.)   

A Budget is a Moral Document

I hear this statement from time to time, and almost always, it turns out to be a reference to the spending side of the budget. 

But it is equally and -- perhaps more importantly -- true of the revenue side of the budget.  To the extent that we -- as individuals, corporations, philanthropies, endowments, pension funds, family trusts, small businesses, whatever -- are obtaining our revenue from illegitimate sources, and keeping it (legally), we are  stealing -- legally -- from what rightly belongs to everyone equally -- the commons.   And that theft has huge effects on others -- individuals and systems.

Pope Says Church Role In Politics "For Good Of All"

Link: Pope Says Church Role In Politics "For Good Of All"

"The Christian community cannot and does not want ever to substitute the legitimate and right competencies of institutions," the Pope told pilgrims at the start of a two-day visit to one of Italy's most economically depressed areas.

He spoke at an open-air mass on a cliff 100 meters (330 feet) above the Mediterranean Sea at one of the southernmost points of the Italian mainland.

A day after strolling through the Vatican Gardens with U.S. President George W. Bush, with whom he sees eye-to-eye on many moral issues, the Pope said the Church had the role of "supporting (governments) in their work and always proposes cooperating with them for the good of all."

...

 

Benedict, wearing gold and cream vestments as he celebrated the mass, said the Church's role in influencing policy-making was especially important in societies where individualism, rather than the common good, is championed.

"Good wins out," he said in his homily.

Ross Perot, Back On the Charts

Link: David S. Broder - Perot, Back On the Charts

Ross Perot has started a new website, www.perotcharts.com, featuring graphic representations of what he sees as the most serious problems facing the US.  I share some of his concerns, but think that several additional charts would be equally relevant.

The Landed Gentry

We hear the phrase "the landed gentry" from time to time, often in the context of first-time homeowners, lyparticularly those who have bought  in a neighborhood undergoing "gentrification."

But what does it mean to be the landed gentry?  What is it that matters about being landed?  And what is "gentry"?

HG Quote of the Day

"There are deep wrongs in the present constitution of society, but they are not wrongs inherent in the constitution of man nor in those social laws which are as truly the laws of the Creator as are the laws of the physical universe. They are wrongs resulting from bad adjustments which it is within our power to amend."

Why did Big Russ have to work two full-time jobs?

The tributes to Tim Russert are moving, and I'm sure many of us who follow news and politics will feel his loss, too young, for quite some time.  But as I listen, I am led to wonder whether he ever questioned why it should be that a man needed to work two full-time jobs  to support his family.

McCain, Obama stake out divergent paths on taxes - Yahoo! News

Link: McCain, Obama stake out divergent paths on taxes

And neither of them gets it right.  They are proposing different arrangements of the deck chairs, and while one may provide a slightly better view of the orchestra, and the other better accoustics for enjoying the music, neither of them understand either what needs to be done or why.

Joseph Stiglitz: Revise Taxation to Combat Scarcity in an Age of Plenty

Link: Bangkok's Independent Newspaper.

The title is certainly promising, and Dr. Stiglitz says some important things.  He points out,

At the core of America's success is technology, symbolised by Silicon Valley. The irony is that the scientists making the advances that enable technology-based growth, and the venture capital firms that finance it were not the ones reaping the biggest rewards in the heyday of the real estate bubble. These real investments are overshadowed by the games that have been absorbing most participants in financial markets.

The world needs to rethink the sources of growth. If the foundations of economic growth lie in advances in science and technology, not in speculation in real estate or financial markets, then tax systems must be realigned. Why should those who make their income by gambling in Wall Street's casinos be taxed at a lower rate than those who earn their money in other ways. Capital gains should be taxed at least at as high a rate as ordinary income. (Such returns will, in any case, get a substantial benefit because the tax is not imposed until the gain is realised.) In addition, there should be a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies.

So far, so good.

But then, he seems to shift gears:

Given the huge increase in inequality in most countries, higher taxes for those who have done well - to help those who have lost ground from globalisation and technological change - are in order, and could also ameliorate the strains imposed by soaring food and energy prices. Countries, like the US, with food stamp programmes clearly need to increase the value of these subsidies in order to ensure that nutrition standards do not deteriorate. Those countries without such programmes might think about instituting them.

It seems to me that it is important to differentiate between those who have done well because they have contributed to the common good -- creating jobs, meeting human needs and wants -- and those who have done well because our system has permitted them to privatize the value of natural resources -- including oil, but also including an even more important resource: urban land value.

I am in agreement with the content of his final paragraph ...

Rich countries must reduce, if not eliminate, distortional agriculture and energy policies, and help those in the poorest countries improve their capacity to produce food. But this is just a start: we have treated our most precious resources - clean water and air - as if they were free. Only new patterns of consumption and production - a new economic model - can address that most fundamental resource problem.

and I don't think Dr. Stiglitz yet sees clearly that in order to conserve those scarce resources, we must turn to Henry George's remedy -- land value taxation -- in order to create the incentives which will concentrate our population into more compact cities, making effective public transportation a real option.  Without this, no amount of research on alternative energy sources for individual cars is going to reduce our energy usage by the kinds of rates that we simply must achieve.  This is not a "command and control" approach; rather, it is making possible and affordable that which many people prefer to do, by reversing some perverse incentives.

If we continue to sprawl as we do now, we simply cannot solve the energy problem -- or the housing affordability problem,  or the poverty problem -- or our economic justice problems. 

For more on Joe Stiglitz, see http://wealthandwant.com/themes/underpop/Stiglitz.htm

The Landlord's Prayer

This comes from a predecessor to the current Episcopal/Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Oil, Land, Water -- who among us is entitled to privatize their value?

Land, water, oil, air ... none of it is of our creation, and all of us depend on access to them.  If dollars are involved, to whom should they flow, and why?  If royalties are due, who is entitled to them? If rent happens, as it does in any place where there is a scarcity, who is entitled to it?

Is it the fellow whose land is in high demand?  Is it the fellow whose land has valuable minerals in it? Is it the fellow whose property is on a great aquifer?  Is it the great-great-grandchild of the Duke of Westminster, or of the first Caucasian settlers on a particular piece of land, or of someone to whom they sold title?   LVTfan says not. 

The Elder Economic Security Standard, new sibling to the Self Sufficiency Standard

I've posted before about the Self-Sufficiency Standard studies, which show, for a young family, the bare-bones cost of living by locality, for various configurations of family.  They answer the question "What does it cost to live here, without subsidies or help from relatives, with all one's most basic needs met, but no frills?"  These studies have been conducted in about 35 states, some as many as 3 times.

Now a similar methodology has been developed to measure the cost of living for seniors.  I'm looking at the study for Pennsylvania, where I grew up and where I still have an elderly relative.  He lives modestly in one of the more expensive counties, and based on what I know about wealth distribution among seniors, I've told him he's in pretty good financial condition for someone of his age.  He doesn't see it that way.

Alaska Oil Revenues Tally High

link: http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/060808/hom_20080608002.shtml

Alaska treats as its common treasure a significant share of the economic value of its oil.  Oil revenues finance a significant part of Alaska spending (supplemented by generous amounts of federal pork brought home by powerful senators who argue that because Alaska is such a new state and relatively low in population, the rest of us should be financing their infrastructure needs).  And a portion of the oil revenue goes into the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is invested in a diversified portfolio and provides annual payments to every man, woman and child in Alaska.  One of the results is that Alaska has among the lowest range of incomes,because even a low-income person in Alaska receives an annual dividend from that invested oil money.  Pretty smart, huh?

One Solution for Many Problems?

That was the title I chose for a short talk I gave at the "Building a New World Conference" at Radford, VA, a few weeks ago.  Here it is ...